


If It Makes You Happy

by Dwarfankylosaur



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: First Time, Humor, Kink Meme, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dwarfankylosaur/pseuds/Dwarfankylosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for dresden_kink round 4 for the following challenge:</p><p>Marcone hates the thought of Harry being in a relationship with Thomas. Mainly because if he had Harry's attention he'd never let him go. It drives him insane that Thomas just doesn't seem to care that much but Harry seems to love him anyway.</p><p>Marcone concocts a plan to make Harry happy--by making sure Thomas makes Harry happy--no matter how much it pains Marcone to do so. If/when that doesn't work there's always the last resort--steal Harry away to do it himself.</p><p>Bonus if Harry is completely attached to Marcone and finds his machinations cutely endearing/baffling/disturbing/irritating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Let me guess," Marcone said as he stepped up beside me. "You went shopping for a new alarm clock." As if to punctuate his words, a plastic-covered radio dial the size of a saucer came flying out of the burning wreckage with a plink, hit the ground, and rolled to about thirty feet in front of us, where it fell over and began to melt into the pavement. Marcone should have been sweating from the heat, like any normal human within a hundred yards of the blaze, but instead the firelight just made him look like a prowling cat, all dark and dangerous. Life is unfair.

"It's not my fault the Deceptacons decided to return to the mothership," I said. A look of confusion and annoyance did not flash across Marcone's face. Can't win 'em all, I guess.

Thing is, it really wasn't my fault. Some amateur with a little power had tried to build himself a robot army. I could have told him it wouldn't work, but does anyone read my pamphlets? Of course not. So after they'd disposed of him, and the less said about that mess the better, they'd apparently decided to return home to liberate their enslaved brethren at Crazy Uncle Mike's Nearly-New Electronics, 2403 West Jackson Boulevard. I'd tried to take them down cleanly, but a warehouse full of dubiously-functional electronics isn't the best environment for detail work. Fortunately, for once the fire department hadn't assumed I was an arsonist and called the cops, so I was sticking around to make sure that nothing rose from the ashes. Which explained why I was there. I tried to come up with an explanation for Marcone for a minute or so before giving up and asking him.

"I have a business arrangement with the proprietors," he said.

"Like, a protection-racket-type arrangement?"

Marcone tilted his head slightly. "My organization provides certain guarantees to our associates. Over the past several years, those guarantees have been expanded to cover fires and what we shall, for the sake of argument, describe as acts of God. Mostly fires. The proprietors of Uncle Mike's will be compensated for this damage. I'm simply here to put in a showing until our insurance representatives arrive." He waited for me to say something, but as sinister as Marcone's 'arrangements' might be, I couldn't complain about a small business owner getting repaid for damage I'd just caused. If that was really what was happening. It seemed a little odd that he'd show up personally to watch the destruction of a second-hand appliance store, but hey, maybe the Outfit was trying to improve its customer service.

He waited until it was clear that I wasn't going to say anything, and then for another minute or so. Then he spoke, his voice strangely awkward, like an instrument coming in half a beat late. "I hear that you and Mr. Raith are now living together."

"Mm-hmm," I said. See, I can be mysterious and inscrutable.

"So I take it your" -- he paused for a millisecond -- "relationship is serious?" So that was why he was asking, the homophobic creep.

"Yes," I hissed. "Yes, it is. We're picking out matching china patterns. We're making wild, passionate love all night, every night, on every flat surface in my apartment. Do you have a problem with that, Marcone?"

Marcone's face was a blank mask, but his nostrils were flaring slightly and his breathing was slow and controlled. I felt a vindictive stab of pleasure.

"Do you love him?"

"Yes," I said, and almost jerked in surprise. It was the last thing I expected him to ask, and from the slight widening of his eyes, it looked like it was the last thing Marcone himself had expected to ask. Still, I realized, in my shock I'd answered honestly. Thomas was obnoxious and irresponsible and just plain tacky. He was a coward, and he was always there when I needed him. He was my brother. I loved him.

"Yeah," I said to myself. I could feel a smile spreading across my face, and I didn't even want to stop it. "Yeah, I do."

"In that case, I hope he makes you happy." Marcone's voice was a little rough -- which, from him, probably meant the words were causing him physical pain -- but he looked me right in the eyes, and against all reason I believed he was sincere.

Filled as I was with peace and good will towards men, I suddenly felt ashamed. I was hardly in a position to throw stones at Marcone. It'd taken over 25 years and Susan's determined influence before I got over my own issues. He was obviously fighting hard against forty years of ingrained prejudice, and amazingly, he seemed to be doing it because he liked me. Or, even more amazingly, just because it was the right thing to do. He was a better man than I had given him credit for. Which, to be honest, happened more often than I wanted to admit.

"What about you?" I said, scuffing my feet. "Is there a Ms. Scumbaguette you're spending your evenings with?"

"No one." Marcone said. "But perhaps it's for the best." I had no idea what to say to that, but he was giving me a clear signal: peace offering recognized and accepted. Marcone nodded to me, and walked off. It occurred to me that he hadn't talked to the insurance rep or the owners, but then, maybe he'd had his consciousness expanded enough for one night.

 

***

 

The real weirdness started three weeks later, even though I didn't immediately recognize it at the time. In my defense, I was running on about two hours of sleep. I'd stumbled upstairs after 36 straight hours of spellwork, and was pleasantly surprised to find the apartment empty. Empty meant that Thomas was gone before noon, and that meant that he still had a job, which meant that we could both pay rent and eat this month. Probably. Better yet, it meant that I had my apartment to myself for a whole day, which, lately, was the closest thing I could imagine to divine bliss. Kids, don't let this be your life.

I had maybe ten minutes to relax on the couch and contemplate my plans for the day -- nap, then shower? or just nap? -- before the door banged open, and Thomas shouldered through, carrying a giant bouquet of roses on one arm and a paper grocery bag in the other. He raised his head to toss the hair out of his face, saw me, and froze. We stared at each other.

"Well," I said finally, "at least you got groceries this time."

Thomas shrugged, set the bag on the table, and pulled a small cauldron from above the icebox and started filling it with water. He was wearing skintight white jeans with slashes across the thighs, and a tight white T-shirt with the neck cut into a deep V across his chest. Even Thomas wouldn't show up to work at Chick-Fil-A looking like that, which meant he'd been fired yesterday and hadn't said anything about it.

I suppressed my urge to scream at him and heaved myself off the couch and went over to dig through the grocery bag. One, two, three bottles of cheap white wine. And oh, look, this one came in a cardboard box with a plastic spigot. "Stars and stones, Thomas, what were you thinking?"

Thomas scowled. "I don't know, Harry, that I just got fired from the fourth job in as many weeks? That I needed a bit of a pick-me-up?"

"We have no food," I said. "We have no rent money, and we're still behind from last month. And you really thought that spending money on booze and flowers was a good idea?"

"What are you talking about?" Thomas said. "The flowers are for you."

"You bought me flowers?" I said, in a high-pitched voice that might, just possibly, be described as a squeak. "Have you sustained a massive head wound you didn't bother to tell me about? Me Harry, remember? Your brother? Not susceptible to your freaky mind-control mojo? That crap may have worked with J-"

Fortunately, Thomas cut me off before I could finish a sentence I would really, truly regret. "No," he said, "I didn't buy them. You did. Or I assumed you did, how the hell should I know. They were on the doorstep, I figured you needed rose petals for a spell and called Flowers Express for a delivery. And if you want to talk about the household budget, let's talk about that half-gallon of ravens' tears you made me buy for you on E-Bay last week."

"Thomas, you idiot," I said, "they were probably for Mrs. Moderatz's birthday. Get them out of the water and back out by the front door before someone notices."

"Um, I don't think so," Thomas said, the "you moron" unspoken but clearly audible. He reached into the pile of rose stems and pulled out a card attached to a long plastic stick. On it, in the sort of large, emphatic block letters you'd use to communicate with the barely literate, were the words "FOR HARRY". There was no other message, and no indication of who'd sent them.

"Huh," I said.

"You didn't order them?" Thomas asked.

"No," I said.

"Huh," he said.

Thomas' brows knit together. It made him look brooding and darkly mysterious, which was no mean feat for a guy dressed like the bass player from Whitesnake. Then his expression cleared, and he went back to just looking vaguely stoned. "It probably is Mrs. Moderatz," he said. "She thinks we're together. And she thinks we're fighting."

"What, just because I threw all your crap into the courtyard last week?" I asked. "Couldn't have been. Maybe it was the constant stream of barely-clothed aerobics instructors rotating through the apartment any time I leave for five minutes."

Thomas winced. "She may have said something to me about not being a very good boyfriend."

" _No._ " I said. "Really?"

He glared at me again. I wondered if his eyebrows could get stuck that way. "She likes you. And she likes to poke her nose into other people's business. She was probably giving me a hint to treat you right."

I wasn't sure I bought that. Mrs. Moderatz was the type to go for long lectures punctuated by banging her cane on the floor, not for gentle manipulation. Then I looked back at the note, and the stark, unambiguous text that looked like someone was writing instructions for a not-especially-bright toddler. Suddenly, it seemed a lot more plausible.

"So my elderly neighbor is trying to play yenta for me and my vampire half-brother," I said.

Thomas frowned at the roses. "Is this normal for adult humans?" he asked. "I can't tell. This stuff never happened on Friends."


	2. Chapter 2

I woke from a dream about green eyes and strong hands and dragged myself to the bathroom, feeling sticky and ashamed, and saying a silent prayer of thanks that Thomas was still asleep on the couch and couldn't make any of his usual helpful comments. It wasn't the first time this had happened, or even the fiftieth. In the days after I first met John Marcone, I'd been horrified at my own reactions -- both at the 'homosexual urges' (Justin's words) that I'd convinced myself I'd gotten over, and the moral weakness that having those urges for a man like Marcone revealed.

I held onto that fear for months, until Susan made a project of coaxing every shameful fantasy I'd ever had out of me and whispering them back into my ear, along with a few of her own, as she rode me until we both came to the sound of her voice. After that, my deep dark secret never-to-be-acted-upon infatuation with Chicago's resident mob boss seemed a lot less deep and dark, and a lot more like something she and I could laugh about together. After Susan left, it became a moot point: I couldn't bring myself to even think about sex, let alone sex with someone else, for over a year, and I was still piecing myself back together.

In the weeks since my last conversation with Marcone, though, it felt like a barrier had been brought down. I don't know why seeing that one small moment of both weakness and strength made such a difference when I'd already seen his darkest secrets, but it did. Before, he'd been a cardboard villain, a prop in some of my kinkier fantasies, even a force of nature. Now, I found myself overwhelmed by my new awareness of John Marcone, Flawed Human Being, at the oddest moments. Brushing my teeth on autopilot in the mornings, I would get caught up wondering if Marcone flossed, if he used one of those fluoride mouthwashes, if he hated the taste but forced himself to rinse anyway, or if he bought the stuff and let it sit in his medicine cabinet untouched.

Along with all these revelations came a shocking awareness of his body. Suddenly, I could pull up photo-perfect memories of the tendons in his wrists, the line of his throat, the strong curve of his back in the t-shirt he'd worn to visit Amanda. I had at least two years' worth of images in my head that I hadn't even realized I'd been hoarding.

The problem was, seeing Marcone as a person meant I had a whole new reason to feel guilty for lusting after him. There was a decent chance the soulgaze had shown him how I'd reacted to him at our first meeting, and I'd always assumed that a few mildly flirtatious mannerisms -- the way he leaned in when he spoke to me, or held my gaze for just a bit too long -- meant he knew about my attraction to him and wasn't above using it against me. Now, I was forced to face the possibility that he had no idea. He might have been a criminal scumbag, but the thought of how violated he might feel if he knew what I was thinking chilled me more than the freezing water.

***

By the time I got out of the shower, Thomas was long gone. I threw on a t-shirt and jeans and puttered into the kitchen for some coffee. In the middle of the kitchen table was a six-inch-high model of R2-D2, sitting on a folded piece of paper. Unfolded, the paper read, in Thomas' sprawling handwriting:

> Saw this at the Maxwell Street Market, thought of you. Sorry about that thing.  
> Thomas

followed by a heart and a little smiley face. A little odd, maybe, but that was how Thomas signed all his letters, including the angry five-page screeds about the broken hot water heater he sometimes left stuck to the icebox. It was a habit he'd cultivated in his years at House Raith and now found impossible to break.

I picked up the model and turned it in my hands, and one of the side panels dropped down when I pressed it. Behind the panel was a small, circular hole about a quarter of an inch in diameter. I picked up an old, half-chewed pencil and poked it in experimentally, and R2-D2 made a grinding noise. I yanked the pencil out, then stared at it.

The tip looked sharper.

I stuck the pencil back in, and R2 whirred for a moment, then stopped and emitted a series of happy beeping noises. I pulled the pencil back out. The tip had been sharpened to a needle point.

My mind was filled with visions of ripping my old, gummy pencil sharpener off the wall in my workroom and melting it down to scrap. Why had I never thought of building a magical pencil sharpener? Then I noticed another panel, this one with the raised outline of two AA batteries. The thing was clearly some sort of electrical device, which meant that it would last about five minutes around me, if I was careful. Still, it had been fun while it lasted.

I stuck the pencil back in. R2-D2 whirred.

***

When Thomas got back from his new job, he found me sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by at least six dozen pencils, all of them sharpened down to nubs. "Thomas," I said, "I forgive you. I forgive you for things you haven't even done yet. In fact, I will re-plaster that wall myself."

"Forget the wall," Thomas said. "We've got bigger problems. I talked to Mrs. Moderatz, and she didn't send the roses."

Reluctantly, I set down pencil number seventy-something. "Maybe she was just being coy?" Thomas gave me a look. Okay, it did seem a little farfetched.

"She asked if I was high," Thomas said. "And then she kept me there for forty-five minutes telling me about her sister's nephew who got addicted to 'the marijuana'." He pronounced it with a hard j, and made little air quotes with his fingers.

"Okay, so, someone else sent them," I said. "Someone sent me flowers. It's probably not a sinister plot. Tell me what you did to make this thing keep working."

"What thing?"

"The pencil sharpener," I said, holding it up. "The one you left me this morning."

Thomas froze. "The pencil sharpener I left you," he said, slowly.

"Yeah," I said. "You left a note." I passed the paper to him, and he took it gingerly and unfolded it, holding it as far away from his body as possible.

"It's your handwriting," I said, dumbly.

"Yeah," Thomas said, his face grim. "It is."


	3. Chapter 3

In a way, the fact that R2 had shown up inside the apartment was a good sign. After an unfortunate incident with one of Murphy's errand boys, I'd had to re-work my wards and they were now triggered by the threshold effect, rather than by physical entry, until I could work out a system that wouldn't accidentally fry innocent Jehovah's Witnesses. They would still apply full strength to any supernatural or malevolent entity, but might not react to a vanilla human who genuinely meant no harm to the people inside. It wasn't foolproof -- it wouldn't work against, say, an Evil Overlord who sent in an innocent dupe -- but the lack of alarms was still reassuring.

Plus, I couldn't think of any of my many enemies who would try to attack me with two dozen roses and a (really freaking awesome) pencil sharpener. It was baffling, and creepy, but it just didn't feel scary.

Thomas, after a few minutes of cryptic warnings and dark looks aimed at R2, had to admit that he was as stumped as I was. Then we bickered for another twenty minutes, stalling for time, before facing the inevitable and going downstairs to talk to Bob.

Bob promptly rolled off his shelf laughing. I didn't bother to grab him on the way down.

"Harry has a secret admirer," Bob gasped from the floor. "This is too, too precious."

"Harry has a stalker, who may or may not be trying to bomb, poison or magically entrap him, or worse, me." Thomas said. "This isn't funny."

"Oh, I beg to differ," Bob said, but he gave us a tracking spell and offered to take a look at the sharpener.

Bob couldn't figure out how to reverse engineer the Murphonic shield any more than I could, but the shield itself produced a surprisingly simple energy signature, and after Bob had examined it with his senses and I had used my Sight, it was clear that the spell was either the most fiendishly clever piece of magical misdirection Bob had encountered in 400 years, or exactly what it seemed to be and nothing more.

Unfortunately, the spell had also had the side effect of eliminating any magical traces from the object, like a cloth wiping away fingerprints. While I could forcibly remove the shield -- which I couldn't bring myself to do, much to Thomas' disgust -- I couldn't bring back the lost information. Since the roses had wilted and been thrown out weeks ago, that made the tracking spell useless.

Thomas, who still insisted that the sharpener was a dire threat even if he couldn't explain how, demanded that I rework the wards on the apartment immediately. Once that was done, he demanded that we drive out to the docks and drop R2 into Lake Michigan, but reluctantly settled for letting me put it in the middle of my summoning circle and raise the strongest binding spell I knew around it.

When I was done, R2 sat, small and forlorn, in the middle of a huge silver circle on my workroom floor. I felt myself reaching out to him helplessly, but Thomas slapped my hand away.

***

Without tracking spells, that left us with good old-fashioned leg work. Since that was at least nominally my job, I wasn't expecting much trouble.

Mac MacAnally listened to my story with a carefully blank expression. After I had finished, he stared at me for a minute. Then he got up and walked over to the other end of the bar, shaking his head. So much for my best source.

Lea was genteelly baffled as only Lea could be. "Dearest," she told me, "If you wanted a pencil sharpener, why didn't you come to me? I'll imprison one of my sprites in a box for you. If he gives you any trouble, send him back to me and I'll make sure he's disciplined appropriately."

Billy had no idea, though he was as earnestly eager to help as ever. Still, he didn't think it was one of the Alphas pulling a prank. In fact, he was having trouble even wrapping his head around the situation.

"So," he said, "Someone who isn't Thomas is sending you flowers."

"Right," I said.

"And you're upset," he said.

"More concerned," I said.

"Because you want Thomas to give you flowers."

"No," I said. "Because the person sending me flowers is pretending to be Thomas, but isn't Thomas. They might be evil."

"Okay," Billy said slowly. "Okay. I- What?"

I wasn't willing to talk to Ebenezar again just yet, and besides, he wouldn't be able to do anything I couldn't do. In desperation, I called Murphy to see if she had any ideas, but she just accused me of making the whole thing up, then accused Thomas of making the whole thing up to mess with my head. Thomas spoke to Lara Raith, who was angry and dismissive, which according to Thomas just meant she was annoyed that an unknown person or persons had managed to lay a trap too diabolically clever for her to puzzle out.

Meanwhile, we hadn't found any more mysterious items on the kitchen table. We had, however, begun receiving packages in the mail, some addressed to me, some addressed to Thomas with written instructions that the contents be given to me, and all of which Thomas insisted be stacked in the middle of the summoning circle along with R2.

By the time I reached the end of my contacts list, the circle contained twelve pairs of SmartWool socks, a steel-reinforced cat tower for Mister that fit perfectly into the awkward, useless alcove next to the couch, two pairs of woolen long underwear in my size, an oddly-shaped ivory lump that turned out, on closer inspection, to be a dragon molar, a gift certificate for $200 worth of takeout from Fresch and Holsum's All-Natural Deli and Bakery, a set of Egyptian cotton bedsheets, and one of those full-spectrum sun lamps people use for seasonal mood disorders. Thomas actually teared up a little when that last one went into the summoning circle, but I remembered my little R2 unit and felt no sympathy.

Now I had only one person left on my list. It was time to go see John Marcone.


	4. Chapter 4

"I'm going to talk to Marcone," I announced.

"Great," Thomas said. "Try not to shame the family by drooling on him." He looked up at my spluttering face, and shrugged. "You've been living here longer than I have. You should know how thin the walls are."

"That's crazy," I said, feeling my face turn red. "I don't-"

"Performance anxiety?" Thomas asked, sympathetically. "I could explain what to do, if you need help."

I explained to Thomas what he could do in graphic detail, and made a dignified exit, manfully ignoring the sound of Thomas cackling in the background. I don't know why all the women I know describe his laugh as 'rich' and 'melodic.' He sounds like a rabid hyena.

***

Marcone's current office building was a honeycomb structure of shining glass and steel. The receptionist didn't look impressed by my worn jeans and "Save a broom, ride a wizard" T-shirt, but when I introduced myself her eyes widened and she pressed a button underneath her desk.

Two minutes later, Cujo Hendricks came striding out of the elevator. It might just be my imagination, but his eyes seemed to contain at least 300 percent more murderous hatred than usual. I had no idea why that might be, but then, who knows what lurks in the mind of Cujo, or if anything lurks in the mind of Cujo at all.

"He's in a meeting," Hendricks said.

"I'll wait," I said.

Hendricks grunted, then turned on his heel and strode off back towards the elevator. For lack of a better idea, I followed him.

In the enforced stillness of the long, tense elevator ride up to the eightieth floor, I found time to reflect on my next move, and wished that I hadn't. I'd been moving forward with a simple logical momentum: I have questions, Marcone knows things, ergo, talk to Marcone. Trouble was, that logic was so tenuous it fell apart if you so much as looked at it hard. Marcone wasn't a magic user, he wasn't actually omniscient no matter how hard he pretended otherwise, and there was no way that he, personally, would get involved in something this petty.

And there, I realized, was the problem. On some level, I'd been hoping Marcone _was_ involved. After all, he certainly had the resources to pull it off; hell, he probably had the blueprints to my apartment, along with the measurements for that stupid alcove. But he had no reason to. If he were trying to spy on me, he'd do it unobtrusively; if he were trying to kill me, he'd have done it already. And if it were some sort of courtship -- which, let's face it, was vanishingly unlikely even to begin with -- why send me gifts and claim they were from Thomas? It was insane. I was insane. And if I stayed, I was going to have to explain all this to Marcone.

I had to get out of there.

The elevator door opened onto a waiting room with a blindingly white carpet and an enormous glass wall with a stunning view of the city skyline. "Listen," I said, and Hendricks shoved me through the elevator door.

At the other end of the room were two closed doors, and between those doors was a huge, sleek desk made of black marble. Behind that desk, Marcone's secretary looked up from her computer screen. She was plump, in her late fifties, and looked like someone's beloved kindergarten teacher, or maybe Clark Kent's mom. She smiled warmly at me and turned to Hendricks. "Nathan, honey, who have you brought me today?"

"Dresden," Hendricks said, and pushed me against the wall, as far as possible from the computer on her desk. The smile fell off Mrs. Kent's face like a steel grate slamming down, and she glowered at me.

"You know what," I said, "this isn't really that important. I can--"

Mrs. Kent turned away, ignoring me completely, and punched a code into her phone. Three seconds later, the left-hand door opened, and Marcone walked through. I could hear several uncertain voices asking, "Mr. Marcone?" and one loud, genial male voice shouting, "Johnny, what the fuck?" Marcone ignored them all.

"Mr. Dresden," he said. "This is unexpected. How may I be of service?"

"As I was just telling Cujo here," I said, "this isn't urgent, and you're in a meeting."

"The meeting is not especially important," Marcone said. "Tell me what you've come here for, and I'll do my best to see that you get it."

"No, really," I said. "It's not-"

"Hendricks!" the voice bellowed from inside the conference room. "Tell that Dago cocksucker to either get his ass back in here or order us some more of those fucking canapes."

"Rod, shut the fuck up," Marcone yelled back, then sighed deeply. "Though I prefer to associate with a better class of people, my business sometimes forces me to become involved in local politics. Distasteful, but necessary. You were saying?"

Rod? "Is that the _governor_ in there?"

"As I said," Marcone replied, waving his hand, "unimportant. Please continue."

"It's not a big deal," I said. "It's not even that interesting. Seriously, go back to your meeting."

Marcone made eye contact and held it. "I assure you, Mr. Dresden, there is nothing you could possibly have to say that would not interest me."

I opened my mouth to respond, but found I couldn't remember a single word in the English language. I couldn't even connect the words Marcone had just spoken to me. There was something important happening, and I was missing it. I knew I was flailing, and I didn't know how to stop. I clenched my hands, and my palms were slick with sweat.

"Hey," the voice yelled. "Tell him I'm gonna chew my own arm off."

"Tell him he can blow me," Marcone shouted, not looking away.

"Listen," I said, and found to my relief that I could form words again. "I never thought I would say these words to you, but I apologize. I apologize for wasting your time. I'm going to go now. I'll see you around."

As I spoke, I backed into the elevator and hit the button for the lobby frantically. Marcone stepped towards me and opened his mouth to speak, but as he did, the doors slid shut. The stupid things were made out of glass, though, like everything else in that building, so I got to stand silently for what felt like an hour watching Marcone stare at me, frozen, before the elevator finally began to move and he rose out of sight.


	5. Chapter 5

I had hoped Thomas would be gone when I got home, but then, when have I ever been that lucky?

"How'd it go?" he said.

I turned and opened one of the cupboards. Empty, like the whole kitchen, but at least it gave me something to look at other than Thomas. "I didn't ask him."

"What was that?" Thomas said.

"I didn't ask him," I snapped, still staring into the empty cupboard. "I think you're overreacting, and he's a busy man. I'm sure he's not interested in standing there while I spazz all over him."

That had sounded a lot less Freudian in my head.

There was a pause behind me. "I'm not saying anything," Thomas said, "I just want you to know I'm not saying anything." He sighed. "Anyway, we've been looking at this from the wrong angle. I think the objects themselves aren't dangerous."

"Since my pencil sharpener's been sitting downstairs for over three months and never did anything to hurt anyone, I'd say you're right," I said, bitterly.

"Exactly," he said. "It's not as crude as a Trojan Horse. It's much worse. We're being blackmailed."

I turned. "Thomas," I said, trying to force every possible ounce of sincerity into my voice, "I'm really not in the mood for this."

"That's too bad," Thomas said, "because I doubt these people care about your moods, and neither will the White Council if we don't deal with this problem. Now." He spoke with an odd emphasis on the word 'deal' that I tried hard not to hear.

"Let me get this straight," I said. "Someone who knows about the war found out you're my brother" -- Thomas opened his mouth -- "or even just that we're living together" -- he nodded and closed it -- "and instead of demanding favors or power or a million billion dollars, they decided to send me love notes in your handwriting."

"Right," he said. "Look, if you were going to blackmail someone, would you just tell them what you wanted and then threaten them if they didn't give it to you?"

"Well, yeah," I said.

"Of course you wouldn't," Thomas said impatiently. "Not right away. You'd drop hints. You'd make cryptic comments. You'd invade their safe spaces" -- he glanced at the kitchen table significantly -- "to make them feel vulnerable. You wouldn't just come out and tell them what you planned to do, because it's more efficient to let them create a worst-case scenario on their own. With no information to work with, they're guaranteed to come up with at least a dozen ideas worse than anything you could imagine, which makes it easier to keep your victims confused and scared."

"Well," I said, "confused, anyway." Thomas ignored me.

"The worst thing you can do, of course, is make your demands too early. If you do that too soon, people start to feel like they understand their situation, and then they start to feel like they can take steps to change it. Nothing destroys someone's will to fight like weeks or months of helplessness. You want them trapped: they know something terrible is about to happen, but they don't know what or how, and they don't know how to even try to stop it. Then, when they're so desperate they'll do anything just to feel like they have some control again" -- he spread his arms, as though wrapping up a presentation for a kindergarten class -- "you swoop in and offer to make all their problems go away if they'll just do one little favor for you." He rolled his eyes at me. "Come on, don't tell me your parents never did this to you when you were a kid."

I gaped at him.

Thomas sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay," he said to himself. "Okay. You're new at this; that's fine. You've got me along to help you." He lowered his hand. "Harry. Look at me. I promise you, we are going to get through this together."

I felt something icy crawling in my belly. Sure, Thomas acted like a flake, but he'd been fighting for survival in the vampire courts for longer than I'd been alive, and he was only here now, sitting at my kitchen table in a Wham! T-shirt, because he'd won every single time. When he offered advice, the smart thing to do was listen.

"But it's been almost three months," I said, grabbing onto the first thought that made sense and holding tight. "Shouldn't he-she-they-it have sent us a message by now?"

"Not necessarily." Thomas shrugged. "I embarrassed my father at one of his parties once, when I was eight, and he managed to drag the game out for two years before he finally killed my dog. It was actually pretty anticlimactic. Besides," he said, and held up an envelope, "this just came in the mail an hour ago."

"A list of demands?" I asked. "Thomas, why the hell didn't you mention this earlier?"

"Not exactly," he said. He handed me the envelope. Inside were two tickets for an after-hours event that evening at the Adler Planetarium. "It's a rendezvous," Thomas said. "It's the perfect environment -- small enough to be private, but too public for either of us to risk an open confrontation. Plus, it starts right at dusk. Symbolic neutral territory."

"Are you sure that's what this is?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, Harry," Thomas said. "What else could it be?

***

I like to think that on a normal day I can handle a showdown someplace like the Adler without breaking a sweat, but that doesn't make it true. The gadgets in there make the stuff at Uncle Mike's look like stone knives and arrowheads. Worse, the long, slow adrenalin crash from my meeting with Marcone was bleeding into my anxiety about both the blackmail plot and Thomas' increasingly questionable mental health, raising my stress levels beyond 'scheduled meeting with potentially monologuing villain' into 'imminent nuclear attack'.

That's a fancy way of saying that I stalled the beetle six times in three miles. We barely managed an emergency parallel-park on South Wabash and walked the remaining mile to the planetarium, where I promptly blew out every computer and all the light bulbs in the entry hall. After that, I wasn't getting near a multi-million dollar telescope, even if the staff were stupid enough to let me.

"I'm so sorry, I don't know what happened," the girl at the ticket counter said, as she dug through a series of drawers before triumphantly holding up a list of names. "Do you remember when you bought your tickets?" I shrugged apologetically, and she smiled back at me. "That's okay, there you are, first on the list, Harry Dresden and--" she frowned and flipped through several pages, before crossing a line through the name at the bottom of the last page -- "Thomas Raith. Wow. Usually all the meteor shower nights get snapped up, like, an hour after tickets go on sale in March." She looked up, and her eyes focused on Thomas for the first time. "Oh my God," she said. "Are you a movie star?"

Panic flashed on Thomas' face, and he grabbed my arm and started to tug me away from the ticket counter. "Why don't we go inside," he said, brightly. "I know you wanted to see that . . . astronomy thing."

"Don't worry," the girl called after us. "I won't tell anyone about your boyfriend." Thomas walked quicker. I dug in my heels.

"Thomas," I said, smiling with as many teeth as I could, "there's no way in hell I'm going in there right now."

"But our _friend_ will be looking for us inside," Thomas said.

"If our 'friend' is enough of an evil genius to threaten me with wool socks," I said, "he's going to be enough of an evil genius to look for the wizard outside the building filled with tiny, expensive, possibly-explosive electronic devices." The bored-looking security guard next to us perked up. Thomas glanced at him and made a u-turn towards the door. Score: one, Dresden.

We sat on the steps looking out at the water, and Thomas leaned back and spread his long legs out in front of him. He had somehow pulled an immaculate white linen suit out of the pile of clothes behind the couch, and in the warm evening light he looked like a fashion shoot for GQ. I was dressed in a sport coat with cuffs that ended three inches above my wrists, and looked like the photographer's assistant was going to come by any minute and shoo me off the set with a broom.

The sun set behind us, casting the Chicago skyline into a sharp silhouette. Other visitors wandered out in pairs to watch, then wandered back in. An Asian couple in their mid-sixties walked slowly back and forth by the water's edge, talking in low voices, their hands brushing with every step. I focused on the thin line where the lake met the sky and tried to ignore Thomas silently, furiously plotting beside me.

As the light leached out of the sky, fading from dark blue to reddish-black, I felt the day's accumulated panic slowly drain out of me, leaving a residue of weary disappointment. Maybe our mysterious enemy would show; maybe he wouldn't. I couldn't bring myself to care that much. Thomas was probably right, or at least more right than I had been, but I couldn't bring myself to care about that either. Some stupid, irrational hope had died on that elevator ride up to Marcone's office, and I wanted it back.

Why did it always have to be a malevolent, megalomaniacal magical entity with a mind like a drawer-full of corkscrews and a deep desire to see me eviscerated? Just once, why couldn't it be someone who wanted to buy me wool socks and watch the sun set over our city together?

God, I was so tired of being lonely.

At some point, long after the lights on the boats on Lake Michigan had begun to twinkle in the dark, people started to file out of the main building and wander back towards their cars. I rubbed the ticket stubs between my fingers and tapped Thomas' ankle with my foot.

"So, O Great Master of Subterfuge," I said, "what do we do now?"

Thomas was silent a moment, and I turned towards him. His mouth was thin, the skin of his face stretched tight. He was never anything less than beautiful, but the expression on his face made me want to look away.

"I've underestimated them." He didn't meet my eyes. "They know about you and me; we know they know; they know we know they know. They've shown their hand in exchange for nothing, which means that they don't think they've lost anything of value. Which means that they have something even worse in reserve." He let out a hollow laugh. "Or they just want us to think they do."

"Right," I said. "Also, never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line." My voice sounded flat to my own ears. I stuck one of the ticket stubs between my fingers and made it dance back and forth across my knuckles.

Then I held it up and squinted at it. Then I scrabbled for the second one on the stair beside me and held that up too.

I sat bolt upright and grabbed blindly for Thomas' shoulder. "Thomas," I said. "Oh, fuck."


	6. Chapter 6

Thomas wasn't happy about being dropped off at the L.

"Let me put this in terms you can understand," he said. "This is a battle of wits, and you are bringing a knife to a game of Global Thermonuclear War. You don't know his plans or his motivations. In fact, all you know is that he's managed to fool both of us for months."

"He's not going to hurt me," I said. "Threaten me, maybe, but not hurt me. I know him, and it's not his style."

"Like you knew six hours ago that he had nothing to do with this?"

"You're probably right, and if I'm not back by morning, you have my permission to feel smug about it." I leaned over and shut the passenger door. "I'll call you, okay? Two hours, max. I'll be fine," I said through the window, and drove off. The beetle purred and obligingly slid into third gear. Thomas was right about one thing: having information made me feel calmer, even if I didn't have leverage or a plan or any understanding of what was going on beyond "Marcone is planning something weird."

Come to think of it, that describes my life on most days.

When I walked through the glass doors at Marcone's office, Hendricks and Gard were bent over the security monitor at the reception desk, their heads close together. Hendricks was grinning, and Gard was laughing in pure delight, deep and lovely. I cleared my throat, and they jerked away from each other, expressions going blank. A few tinny screams came from the speakers, followed by the muted sound of an explosion, until Hendricks, still expressionless, stabbed a button on the keyboard and the room descended into silence.

After an awkward moment, Hendricks hit another sequence of keys, and the elevator at the far end of the hall dinged and opened.

"Well?" he said. "The boss is upstairs."

I walked down the hallway, past six other elevators that stayed resolutely closed, before reaching the end. Before I could press the button for the 70th floor, the doors slid shut and the elevator began to rise. Hendricks is such a dick.

Until I stepped into Marcone's office, it hadn't even occurred to me that, at a quarter to midnight, it would have made more sense to look for him at home. He was still at his desk, though, with a stack of papers on his left hand, an empty glass in front of him, and a bottle of something dark and expensive-looking to his right.

"Harry!" he said, slapping both hands on the desk. "What brings you here tonight?" His voice was too loud in the silent office, bright and hard as a new coin, and his movements lacked their usual grace, as though his body were suddenly encountering forces like gravity and momentum that, before now, had only ever applied to other people. The bottle, I noticed, was nearly full. Marcone wasn't drunk; he was exhausted, and trying to hide it. Well, that made two of us.

"I want to know why you're doing this," I said.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," Marcone said.

"You sent those tickets," I said. "And I'm guessing you sent all the other stuff, too."

"Again," Marcone said, and I could see him building a mental wall up right in front of me, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Cut the crap, _John_ ," I said. "The ticket stub said February. That's a month before the summer season tickets even go on sale. And Thomas' wasn't bought until three o'clock this afternoon. I'm guessing there are twenty people who could wrangle that, and they're all major donors." Marcone leaned forward and I held a hand up. "And before you say anything, yes, that makes nineteen other suspects, plus entities with mind-control abilities, but why would anyone else bother?"

"Actually," Marcone said, "you have an inflated opinion of me. There are over a hundred individuals who have given more to the Adler than I have." He inhaled, was still for a moment, and switched strategies. "But, yes, I do have a certain number of tickets set aside for my employees and valued associates, and yes, I did provide two of those tickets to Mr. Raith. I confess. Did you enjoy yourselves?"

"No," I said. "No, we did not enjoy ourselves. Thomas is having a nervous breakdown because he thinks you're trying to blackmail us, which is at least better than when he thought you were trying to blow up our apartment building with a bomb hidden in a cat gym. Me, I don't know what to think."

Marcone froze. Not hesitated, not blinked, froze. "He discussed this with you?"

"What are you talking about? Yes, he discussed it with me."

"At what point did he--"

I held up a hand. "Answers," I said. "I want to know what was going on in that twisty little brain of yours. And I will know if you lie." I wasn't all that sure about the last one, but I was feeling confident, and I had to project confidence whether I felt it or not. Right now, I was like one of those tiny, yappy dogs who manages to intimidate pit bulls through sheer force of will. If I didn't keep it up, Marcone was going to figure out that he was twice my size and eat me.

"Very well," Marcone said, his lips thin. "What would you like to know?"

"Why?" I said. "Why send me all that stuff? And why pretend it was from Thomas? Was that some kind of insane mind-screw, or did you genuinely think that in three months I would never once talk to the guy I was sharing an apartment with?"

"Given what I know of your relationship," Marcone said, "I believed you would welcome gifts from Mr. Raith. And, given what I know of Mr. Raith, I was confident that he would simply take credit for anything that showed up with his name on it." Marcone's mouth twisted. "Unbelievably, I seem to have overestimated his intelligence."

I blinked. "So, you spend hours trawling through some flea market, or send some goon to do it for you, and then..."

"I did not go trawling through anywhere," Marcone said. "There's a wonderful invention called the internet, Dresden. It provides access to an amazing range of merchandise. Your pencil sharpener, for instance, was purchased on eBay." His tone was dismissive, but his shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly. So, less dismissive than defensive. I was getting pretty good at this.

"And again," I said, "Why?"

Marcone sighed. "You may be shocked to hear this," he said, "but pushing little old ladies down flights of stairs makes up, at a maximum, five percent of my day. Much of my time is taken up by meetings which require my presence but very little of my attention. So, occasionally, I browse various online auction and retail sites, and occasionally, I run across something you might find useful. People assume I'm taking notes."

"Wait," I said. "You did this because you were _bored at work?_ "

He shrugged, which was conspicuously not an answer.

"Bullshit," I said. "If you're stuck in a meeting, you play minesweeper like everyone else. You don't send me packages with my boyfriend's name on them. You don't--"

" _He doesn't value you._ " Marcone spat. "He flaunts his infidelities. He lives off of you like a parasite. You let him into your home, into your life, and he gives you _nothing_. If I had-" He stopped. His eyes had that same look of panic and naked desperation that I remembered from the parking lot outside Amanda's hospital room.

Somewhere in the back of my head, a little voice was singing _yes please yes yes THIS_.

"So why not try to break us up?" I asked. "Why all the headgames?"

"You love him," Marcone said flatly. "You smile when you say his name. I've done evil things in my life, but I would not try to steal that from you."

I thought about how to respond to that. Then I remembered where thinking had got me over the past few months, and instead I walked around the desk, knelt so that we were eye-to-eye, and leaned in to kiss him.

Marcone shoved me back so hard I had to catch myself against one of the desk legs.

"I have no interest in being a pawn in whatever game you and Raith are playing with each other," he said. His face was dark with anger. The lamp flickered, and I tried to shove my frustration down. Right; just because I'd had my earth-shattering moment of revelation didn't mean he'd had one too.

"We're not together," I said. His eyes narrowed. "We're just roommates. I only said that because I thought you were being a homophobic ass. I shouldn't have said it. I'm sorry. Can please I touch you now?"

He took a moment to process that. The lamp began to buzz again. Stars and stones, why wasn't there a way to fast-forward through all this? I knew exactly what we should be doing right now, so why didn't he?

"If that's true, I'm sorry," he said, more softly, "but I'm not going to be your consolation prize." I was trying to seduce the most frustrating man on earth.

"I am not in love with Thomas," I said, and oh, shit, now he looked really angry. "John. I'm not. I swear I'm not." I knew I needed something more convincing, but it was hard to make words line up right when John Marcone was two feet away and I wanted my hands on him _right-fucking-now_. "He's" -- my brother -- "a vampire," I finished lamely.

"And I'm a thief and a murderer," John said. "Your point?"

I forced myself to sit back on my heels. The lamp was flickering wildly now, and I could hear the exit signs sparking and hissing in the hallway. "I love Thomas," I said. "But I'm not in love with him. He's a wonderful guy. He's a wonderful friend. But," he's my brother, but more importantly, "he's just -- He's Thomas. He's great, but he's kind of sleazy."

John studied me for a moment. Then, low, and intense, he said:

"I could not agree more."

And he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and leaned down to kiss me.

I blew out every light bulb in the building, but I didn't care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who's interested, or needs something to cut the gallons and gallons of sap in this last installment, Hendricks and Gard are watching Existential Star Wars: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-uQWNd540I>


	7. Chapter 7

A few hours later, in the reddish glow of the backup emergency lights, I peeled a sticky, sweaty piece of paper labeled "Quarterly Product Distribution Figures, Nevada Office" off my chest. John raised his head about an eighth of an inch from where it rested against the bottom drawer of the desk. "That's probably confidential," he said, then let his eyes drift shut.

I peered at paper, and the columns of numbers and dollar signs swam in front of my eyes. Or maybe that was just the ink running. "Lucky for you it's in code," I said, and tossed it back up onto the desk with the rest of the wreckage. Mata Hari I am not.

I leaned back, then jerked and swore as my head connected with the edge of the desk. Marcone blinked lazily, and guided me down sideways so my head lay against his chest. Then we both froze, as the sheer weirdness of our position hit us.

It turns out I can deal with having sex with another guy, but lying with my head pillowed against his broad, manly chest is more than my masculine pride can take. The only thing that kept me from jerking away from him was the thought of just how stupid I would look having a gay freakout now, after my earlier principled and in no way passive-aggressive stand against prejudice. Besides, if I let him act more relaxed than me, I was let him win.

Instead, I forced myself to breathe evenly and relax my muscles one by one, as though waiting for my body to acclimate to cold water. I could feel John doing the same thing. After about a minute, I realized that I was actually pretty comfortable. I told my masculine pride to fuck off.

Another minute, and John started trailing his hand down my side: lazy and with no real intent, just a light touch at my shoulder, the bottom of my ribcage, the outside of my elbow. Knowing him, he was probably gloating. This is mine, and this is mine, and this... I decided to humor him for a while. John Marcone is attractive. John Marcone smug is brain-melting.

"Obviously, the first thing we need to do is buy you a decent suit," he said, low and amused. "And give your landlady a check for the back rent on your apartment. I'd rather buy you a new place, but I'm learning to choose my battles." He was tracing little figure-eights with his fingers in the hollow behind my collarbone, and it took a minute for his words to filter through the pleasant haze.

I jerked up. "Hell no," I said. "You are not paying my rent."

"Harry," Marcone said, very quiet, very controlled, "be reasonable. You are in need of help. I can provide it. Let me give this to you."

"I have no intention of being reasonable," I snapped. "You're not paying my rent. Hell, I should probably give all your " -- my first word was 'crap', but then I thought about the pencil sharpener and the socks and the time he must have spent tracking down the measurements for that freaking cat tree and softened it to 'stuff' -- "back tomorrow. I'm not your pet wizard, and I'm not going to be your mistress."

"I see," Marcone said, chilly as the industrial strength AC which, now that I had moved away from him, was cooling the sweat on my back to ice. He withdrew his hand. "I had no idea you still found the idea of accepting my assistance so distasteful." He was doing that I-am-too-evolved-for-contractions voice that made me want to levitate things at his head. So much for the honeymoon period.

That was my cue to stand up, grab my clothes, and storm out of the building, and it was his cue to watch me go and not stop me. It was the sensible thing to do. Hell, it was probably the right thing to do. It just wasn't what I wanted to do. I'd wanted John since before I could even admit it to myself. I'd wanted this -- us, on his office floor in a wreckage of papers, and all that it promised for the future -- from the moment I realized it was an option. It wasn't fair to loose that so soon.

I could guess what John was thinking right now. I'd accepted his gifts; I'd accepted him, after he'd been -- and I can't believe I'm thinking these words about John Marcone -- pining after me for years, the lead in his very own little operatic tragedy. Now, I was refusing what he thought he had to offer me. Ergo, he expected me to leave so he could sit in the dark and listen to La Boheme and paint his fingernails black, or whatever it is depressed mobsters do.

Fuck that. I wasn't cooperating.

"Look," I said, "you're right. I don't want to owe you. I don't want to be here because you bought me, or won me, or because you can give me more stuff than my deadbeat roommate. I want to be here because it's where I want to be. I don't want either of us to get confused about that."

He was silent for a minute, and my stomach sank. Just as I was trying to remember where all of my clothes were -- I figured I could make it home without underwear, but probably not without pants -- he said, quietly, "I'd like that."

Huh.

I flopped back down, my head deliberately hitting Marcone's sternum hard enough to send the breath whooshing out of his lungs. If he wanted to get rid of me, he was going to have to do it himself. Plus, he was warm.

After a minute, he tentatively put his hand back on my shoulder. I made a show of relaxing into the touch. I believe in setting a good example.

"You're sure about returning everything?" he asked.

"It's probably best," I said, and tried to hide a twinge of regret.

"Even the wool underwear?" he asked, dangerously smooth.

I opened my mouth, then stopped, thinking about how cold my apartment was going to be in a few months, and how soft the wool had felt while I was stuffing it in the pile between the cat gym and the sunlamp.

"It's wicking," John said, all low and seductive.

"You made that word up," I said.

He laughed. "I did not," he said. "In fact, I own several pairs myself."

I blinked. "The capo de tutti capi--"

"That's not a Chicago title--"

"--whatever, wears longjohns?"

I felt him shrug. "I do a great deal of business outside, before dawn. Inexplicably, my enemies find me less threatening when my teeth are chattering uncontrollably."

I took a moment to ponder that mental image.

"Okay," I said.

His hand stilled, then went back to rubbing small circles on my shoulder. "And the suit?"

"Don't push it," I growled.

"I'll owe you," he said, "if it means I won't have to look at another godawful sports coat. And it's not my fault if I like the idea of you walking around the city wearing nothing but what I give you." He paused, then added, all innocence, "And of you doing it because you wanted to."

That put a different spin on things. "Anyone ever tell you you're incredibly creepy?" I asked, but I think the full-body shudder undermined my credibility.

"You, often." Marcone said. Then, after a pause, "We should probably get up. The cleaning staff will be here soon."

"Yep," I said.

Somewhere between fifteen minutes and two hours later, the phone on Marcone's desk rang.

"If that's Klozcek with another 'logistical concern', I'm dumping his body in the lake," John said. He didn't move.

The phone rang again, then let out a frantic series of beeps, and the speakerphone switched on, filling the room with the sound of shattering glass.

"Boss," Hendricks' voice said, "we got a situation."


	8. Chapter 8

The elevator door opened and we stepped through to see Thomas surrounded by the wreckage of three of the plate glass windows that had made up the face of the building's lobby. Behind him, the night winds rushed in through the empty spaces and twisted and swirled around his shoulders. He was radiant under the cold fluorescent lights, his white suit ripped and bloody and his whole body glowing with unearthly, terrible power, his eyes as dark as the void between universes, like Fabio and the Angel of Death rolled into one.

He held a gun pointed at Sigrun Gard's head.

"You will take me to him," he said, his voice raw and inhuman. "You will take me to him, or I swear by all your grey and dying gods I will -- "

I could sense the magic in Gard's hands as she drew in her power for one deadly blow. "Thomas!" I yelled.

He turned towards me, and in an instant all that terrifying energy drained out of him and left behind a frightened, grief-stricken man. He stared at me, the gun in his hand clearly forgotten.

"It's all right," I said. "It's safe. John's not going to hurt us. We're all safe." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw John shake his head quickly at Gard, and she lowered her hands.

"You said you were going to call," Thomas said, dumbly. "You didn't call. And when I called Murphy up, she called the station, and they said there'd been a power surge that had taken out the entire block, and that it had been going on on and off for an hour, but since then there was _nothing moving in the area_ \--"

"Um," I said, tugging at my misbuttoned shirt. "About that. John and -- Marcone and I worked some things out. We, well, we had some wires crossed, but they're all uncrossed now and..." I was making odd pantomiming gestures with my hands, and I wasn't even sure what they were supposed to be.

"Harry," Thomas said, his voice filled with wonder.

"Thomas, it's okay," I said, stepping towards him with my hands outstretched. "John isn't evil." Mostly. "He's just socially impaired."

"Harry," Thomas said, in that same awed tone. "You unbelievable asshole."

"What?" I said.

"You know what?" Thomas said. "I've had it with this. I'm done. I'm through. I'm kicking you out of the apartment."

"You can't do that!" I yelped, as my brain pinwheeled in confusion. "It's my apartment. I have the lease. I control up the wards."

"You think Bob won't help me fix that?" Thomas asked. "Do you have any idea what you put us all through tonight? What you put me through? I got Murphy out of bed at two in the morning--"

"I didn't tell you to do any of that," I pointed out. "Even if I had been kidnapped or something, you couldn't have rescued me on your own. You were just putting yourself in danger."

"I called in at two thirty, and the police said there were a series of EMP surges between midnight and one AM. And since then, silence. Nothing. No movement." Thomas' voice was cold. "I didn't come down here because I thought I could help you win a fight, Harry. I came down here to die avenging you."

I swallowed hard.

John, who had been eying Thomas with something slowly approaching respect, finally turned to me. "Excuse me," he said, and if Thomas' voice was cold his voice was like ice. "Am I to understand that you ran off, alone, in the middle of the night, to confront a known criminal and potentially deadly enemy _whom you had already been advised_ might be trying to kill or magically entrap you, and then you failed to check in with the people you left behind by any means whatsoever?"

"But you're not trying to kill me," I said.

"You had no way of knowing that."

"Your whole elaborate plan was based on the assumption that I'd calmly accept an entire stack of strange packages without asking questions. Now you're upset that I didn't call the bomb squad?"

"My plan," Marcone said, "was based on the assumption that Mr. Raith was both selfish and stupid enough to withhold information vital to your own safety from you in order to make himself look good. No offense," he added to Thomas, who shrugged. "Under the circumstances, Mr. Raith's conclusions were not only reasonable but unavoidable to anyone with a modicum of sense. Your failure to heed his advice or to effectively use him as backup displays a completely unacceptable disregard for your own safety."

" _Thank you_ ," Thomas said. "Oh, and I'm sorry about your windows. I can't afford to repay you or compensate you in any way, but I want you to know that I do feel bad."

"Think nothing of it," John said, waving his hand vaguely and glaring at me. "The fault lay elsewhere."

"Murphy," Thomas said, his eyes widening. "Harry, you have to call Murphy. She's probably breaking down the door to his house with a battering ram right now."

"You have got to be kidding me," I said.

"Harry," John said. "Phone. Now." He pointed to the desk and Hendricks, who had relaxed from his sniper's crouch several minutes ago and was watching the proceedings impassively, un-cocked his shotgun, stashed it beneath the desk, and stepped aside to let me use the phone.

"He has the survival instincts of a brain-damaged lemming," John muttered behind me.

"Tell me about it," Thomas said.

Murphy picked up on the second ring. "Lieutenant Murphy. This better be good," she said.

"Murph," I said, "It's me. I'm fine, but I think Thomas is having a psychotic break."

"Harry!" she gasped. "Oh, my God, Harry, hold on a moment." I could hear her shouting to someone in the background, and male voices shouting back. "Harry," she said into the phone again, "you unbelievable asshole. Do you have any idea what you just put me through?"

"Actually," I said, "I've just heard that speech --"

"I dragged the entire goddamn department out here to Marcone's freaky McMansion," she said, ignoring me. "I dragged Martinez in at three o'clock in the morning, away from the only date this entire department has had in six months --"

Oh, shit. "Martinez? Isn't he the detective who hates me?"

"He used to be," Murphy said sweetly. "Now he's just a detective who hates you. Along with half the beat cops in a two-mile radius, all of dispatch, and me." I held the receiver further and further from my head as Murphy got louder; now it was almost at arms' length. "Did I mention that Marcone's security staff are a bunch of kamikaze lunatics? We had to leave the squad van at the gate and walk down the half-mile driveway to Castle Dracula here because the gate guards kept throwing themselves under the wheels."

I had been catching snippets of conversation from John and Thomas in the corner -- really, really disturbing snippets, like "lucrative short-term contracts for a man of your unique abilities" and "tell me more about this 'Bob' person" -- but at that, the room went silent. Everyone stared at the phone. Then, John turned to look at Hendricks.

"Nathan," he said reprovingly.

Hendricks didn't move, but managed to give the impression of shifting uncomfortably anyway. "I photocopied some of Nagler's essays on non-violent resistance for Vinnie," he said. "What he and the boys choose to do with those ideas is their responsibility."

Everyone, including Murphy on the other end of the phone, was silent.

And then, finally, the cops showed up.

***

The night hadn't been a total loss for Thomas, as I was going to remind him as soon as he started speaking to me again. After all, he had a new best friend. He and Marcone had bonded, first over their mutual disgust with me, and later over their mutual disgust with the police, who had panicked when John told them he didn't want to press charges and started trying to arrest Thomas and hold him for his own protection.

After a lot of reasoned negotiation from John, some truly inspired looming from Hendricks, an over-the-phone character reference from Murphy -- "No, I do not believe that Mr. Marcone will retaliate. Yes, I do believe that the gun went off accidentally four times. Yes, they really are all that stupid." -- and a few disgusted looks from Gard, the cops downgraded the incident to a domestic disturbance and wrote up the windows as accidental property damage. John sent us off, giving Thomas a business card with a handwritten cell phone number and a warm handshake, and stuck around to deal with the insurance. Who knew being an evil overlord meant so much paperwork?

My car had been fried right along with the lights and the building security system, so Hendricks, who was still in the doghouse for distributing seditious literature, was delegated to drive Thomas and me home. It's a testament to his driving skills that he managed to obey all posted speed limits and traffic lights, even though he never once stopped glaring at me in the rear-view mirror.

I was all set to start in on just how insane Thomas had been acting as soon as we got in the car, but I looked at his profile as we moved through the darkened city and shut up. I could see slowly fading terror in the lines around his mouth. Maybe I wasn't the only one learning about what it means to be part of a real family. And maybe I wasn't the only one afraid of loosing something I'd never even realized I could have.

Thomas didn't love easily, for good reason. And when he did, he was really, really bad at it.

Well, he wasn't alone. Maybe he and John could bond over their shared neuroses the next time they met to exchange friendship bracelets.

***

Thomas did eventually let me back into the apartment around noon. Well, he left for work, anyway, and he had to know that I would break through the new wards as soon as he was gone. I peeled off my clothes, which were ruined anyway, took a quick shower, and followed Mister down into the lab.

Mister stopped at the edge of the circle, next to the box labelled 'SunKat Ultimate Cat Tree". He'd been spending a lot of time there lately. Let me say this up front: I don't think my cat can read. I just think it's weird, that's all.

I had meant everything I said to John last night. I still meant it. But here in my home, looking at all the odd little things he had wanted me to have, the idea of accepting a gift seemed a little less scary.

Mister looked at me, then at the box, then back at me. His tail swished.

I sighed and began to lug the box up the stairs.

I had the tree assembled an hour later and was slotting it into the alcove by the couch when the doorbell rang. There was no one at the door when I answered it, but on the front step was a small brown box with an amazon.com label on it. There was a packing list inside which listed the purchase and ship date as fifteen minutes ago. Inside were a pair of red silk boxer shorts with small grey polka-dots and a card. The card read:

> Division reviews this week. Johnny No-Nose has used the phrase "leverage our core competencies" thirty-two times in the past four hours. If he makes it to fifty by the end of the day, you get a pony.
> 
> Welcome to the dark side.
> 
> -J

I picked up the boxers. On closer inspection, the grey polka dots turned out to be tiny, stylized Death Stars.

I went over to the drawer by the icebox and started digging for a pen to fill out the return form. A little voice in the back of my head was telling me to put it off, but I had a feeling that if I did I'd never return them at all. Yes, I'd agreed to keep the stuff in the summoning circle, but it was the principle of the thing.

Then, as my hand finally closed around a (now razor-tipped) pencil, I was struck by a mental image: John, trapped in a mind-numbing four-hour staff meeting, leaning back and maybe sliding down in his chair just a bit and thinking of me. Or, more specifically, of what I was wearing.

John was right; I was doing him a favor.

I put the pencil back, wadded the return form into a ball, and chucked it in the trash. As I did, the phone rang. I grinned.

My day was looking up.


End file.
